Huge Chinese rocket is falling uncontrollably to Earth next week

By: Maksim Panasovskiy | 02.11.2022, 22:04

Earlier this week, China successfully completed construction of the Tiangong orbital station, the equivalent of the International Space Station. But this whole story has one unpleasant side effect.

Here's What We Know

The delivery of the modules into space was carried out by a modified version of the Chinese Long March 5B rocket. It does not have an upper stage, but consists of a main stage and four overhead boosters. The mass of the rocket is 20 tons.

Next week the rocket's main stage will fall to Earth uncontrollably. Because of its large size, the metal fragments from the launcher will not have time to burn up in the atmosphere and will certainly fall to the surface of our planet.

Identical incidents have occurred in each of the three previous Long March 5B launches. The last time huge pieces of a Chinese rocket fell on Indonesia and Malaysia in early August 2022. Previously, fragments fell on a village in Côte d'Ivoire. Fortunately, each time there were no fatalities.

Source: scmp, ArsTechnica